Comfort & Safety First

What brings people to meditation practice? Stress. What is stress? The discomfort & fear (lack of safety) we experience when life circumstances exceed our coping skills.

One of the most poignant things I've read is by the late Marshall Rosenberg PhD, inventor of Nonviolent Communication. He said that the only thing anyone really means to say is 'please don't hurt me.'

We are all distinctly different when we feel safe & comfortable as opposed to when we feel afraid & stressed. These feelings may be situational & short-lived, or life-long tendencies. If we experienced neglect or other significant trauma in early life, we may be chronically afraid & stressed. I can't imagine that anyone could possibly grow up completely shielded from trauma, & consistently held in unconditional love.

“If you feel safe & loved, your brain becomes specialized in exploration, play, and cooperation;

if you are frightened & unwanted, it specializes in managing feelings of fear and abandonment.”

Bessel Van Der Kolk. “The Body Keeps the Score. Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma.” Penguin Books, 2015.

When we feel frightened & alone against the world, we operate from a primitive mind which has only one imperative: survival.

From an evolutionary and current perspectives, when we felt / feel safe (no longer fear for our life / safety), we were / are able to develop / access a more evolved aspect of our mind that is concerned with love, empathy, collaboration, altruism etc - some call this "heart-mind."

Another essential intelligence we're able to access, when we feel safe, is a healthy connection with our own body - "body-mind" connection. This allows us to feel "grounded," like we're truly in this solid body, which is always in a particular place on earth, right here, right now. This is in contrast to being disembodied "in our head," regretting & "living in" the past or being anxious about & "living in" the the future.

A long-time, very serious meditator and psychotherapist, Bill Morgan shares what he's learned through personal experience:

“In psychotherapy, a primary component and focus of the first session with a new client is to establish a welcoming, trustworthy environment, such that he or she will feel safe and sufficiently comfortable to return. As this trust in the holding environment deepens, the client becomes more willing to explore, reveal, and in time, open to ever-deepening reflection and revelation.

In similar fashion, Westerners need to feel this sense of comfort and safety early on in meditation. If this is not a priority, they are more likely to abandon the practice, and if they do continue, it may be an intermittent, frustrating, cognitive grind.

We need to take baby steps that make sense and feel good, steps that are appropriate to our cultural context. This is largely uncharted territory for us, and acknowledging that is an important first step – not an easy one in a cultural milieu that views ‘not knowing’ as an admission of weakness.

The days of throwing a child into the water as a way of teaching him or her how to swim are over. Isn’t it time we stop approaching meditation that way, too? … meditation is often still perceived as rather a dry and serious enterprise, good medicine at best.”

Bill Morgan. "The Meditator's Dilemma: An Innovative Approach to Overcoming Obstacles and Revitalizing Your Practice." Shambhala, 2016.